Tuesday, June 30, 2009

This will be the first of a several part post showing that there has been no warming in Russia. The data comes from the site here. Unfortunately, the data ends in 1990, but, given that the CO2 level over the past century has gone up significantly, we should see warming even if only at the end of this data. But we don't. Only 3 cities in Siberian Russia show warming. Degree-days above zero C is merely the multipilication of the average monthly temperature by the number of days in the month. If there were more months above zero, or higher temperatures, this way of looking at the data should respond quickly to any warming.

Now before going to look at Russia, we will look at Barrow Alaska, because Hagiograph said that the rest of the arctic showed warming. It doesn't. Barrow, Alaska shows cooling, contrary to Hagiographs claim.

Can anyone actually SEE warming in this chart of degree-days?

Now to Suntar, Russia.

This looks pretty flat, with maybe a tiny tiny amount of warming since 1914. Nothing dramatic at all.

Here is Hatanga, Russia

No warming there. In 2008 it cooled dramatically

What about Vanavara Russia? It is flat to possibly having a tiny tiny amoung of cooling.

Here is Bajkit, Russia, No warming here

Indeed, cooling seems to be the rule here.

Here is one station that is warming Erbogancen, Russia. But almost all the warming seems to have occurred around 1970. This is a two-level record. One wonders if there was a change in the station location around 1970.

The final for tonight and this part, lets look at Selagoncy, Russia. It is clearly cooling.

So, where is this warming that everyone is talking about? Maybe it is warming that doesn't actually make thermometers rise? Maybe it is phantom warming. Maybe it is merely political warming!

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Greenland is melting, at least that is the headlines. Everyone in the global warming camp is quaking in their boots awaiting the great flood, foretold long ago by Algore the Magnificent.

Tonight we are going to look at the data for Greenland. There are only a few stations on Greenland which have any length at all. The longest is for Godthab Nuuk 64.17N 51.75W degrees. That record begins in 1866.

Now, if Greenland's temperature is warming, we should see it easily in the degree days above zero. Ice, of course can't melt if it is below zero. It can ablate, but ablation is not caused by global warming. So, if Greenland is warming we should see an increase in both the temperature and the number of days spent above zero deg C. The multiplication of temperature and days is called degree-days. Such calculations are used by electrical companies to estimate how much electricity will be needed for a given area. We can use it to see if there is an increase in degree-days over the past century in Greenland. Below is the degree-days for Godthab Nuuk, Greenland.

One can see immediately that the early 1930s were in general warmer at Godthab Nuuk than they are today. The 2003 peak didn't even match the peaks of the 1930s.

The second longest record in Greenland is Angmagssalik 65.6N, 37.63W. That record started in 1895. Here is the degree-days chart for that town.

Once again, the warming in Angmagssalik, as measured by degree-days, does not match that of the 1930s, yet we are supposed to all be worried about the present warming.

All the other records start after the 1930s and so don't show the warmth of the 1930s in Greenland. From one perspective, they are not useful for long term measurments, but on the other hand they show that the warming of the current days is not all that unusual. Here are Dansmarkhavn, Prins Christi, Egedesminde While these show a bit of warming since 1950, so do the other two longer term records.

I would also like to add a station which is not all that far from Greenland, Reykjavik, Iceland. It has a long record and clearly doesn't show the warming that everyone is fearing.

It is amazing what a small group of people can convince the world is true, so long as the other people don't actually care to look at the data.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Five guys were on a ship going across the ocean. Unfortunately a wave hit their ship and took most of the gasoline they had for their motor. Doing a quick calculation on the remaining fuel, they decided that the only way to make shore was to use the fuel on a much smaller boat. The smaller boat wasn't seaworthy and wouldn't hold all of them. They had enough food for months on the big ship but only enough for a week on the small life boat. They got into the life boat because it was the 'rational' thing to do and the boat sank. All lives were lost. The next day a frieghter found the abandoned ship, which became another of those mysterious crew disappearance stories.

Moral: Be careful of what actions you take.

So you are a person who thinks we need to stop the use of fossil fuel. You advocate ‘green’ energies, like nuclear, solar and wind, energy sources which don’t involve the emissions of CO2. My bet is that you haven't actually run the numbers to see how feasible it is for us to do what you suggest.

Today the world, in toto, uses 82 billion barrels of oil worth of energy. 29 billion of that is in the form of oil; 20 billion from natural gas; 24 billion from coal; 4 billion from nuclear and 5 billion from hydro-electric. This is data taken from the BP 2009 Statistical Review of World Energy, and the data is for 2008.

Now, the reason for stopping the warming is to save the poor Bangladeshi's who will be flooded. They are, you think, so stupid that they will stand still while the ocean levels rise and drowns them. (Well at least that is what it always sounds like the argument is to me). Anyway, for everyone's information, Bangladeshi's are busy burning carbon-based fuels so that they can have a better life. 98.5% of their energy comes from fossil fuels. For my part, I think the first people who should go back to the Neolithic are the Bangladeshi's. They should at least have the honor to stop using all carbon-based fuels and contributing to their drowning.

You say we should go to solar. Cumulative solar energy production accounts for less than 0.01% of total Global Primary Energy demand. http://www.solarbuzz.com/FastFactsIndustry.htm

That is one million tonnes of oil. Yep solar energy, the savior of the world is only today generating about 8 million bbl of oil per year. We use 29 billion barrels of oil each year and the equivalent of 82 billion barrels of oil in energy.We have an extremely long way to go if solar is going to save our butts. But of course, this fact doesn't deter you from your holy jihad to stop the carbon-based economy.

What about that other savior of mankind, wind?

Global wind energy capacity grew by 28.8% last year, even higher than the average over the past decade, to reach total global installations of more than 120.8 GW at the end of 2008. Over 27 GW of new wind power generation capacity came online in 2008, 36% more than in 2007. http://www.gwec.net/index.php?id=30&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=177

So how much is this? the BP Statistical Review says:"One million tonnes of oil produces about 4400 gigawatt-hours (=4.4 terawatt hours) of electricity in a modern power station."

One million tonnes of oil is 7.33 million barrels. So, 260 TWh/4.4 TWh per million tonnes = 433 million barrels of oil. This amounts to .0024 of the world's primary energy usage--Whoop-dee-do. Wind and solar account presently for .0025 of the world's energy.

It is clear that we aren't going to save ourselves with wind and solar. Secondly, I looked into getting wind and solar for my ranch and going off grid. It would cost me $250,000 for solar, it would have a cost payout time of 50 years, but the equipment would only last 30 years. It would cost me $80,000 to get the 4 Skystream turbines necessary to power the house with wind. How many of you have that much money hanging around in your bank accounts awaiting spending on a conversion to green energy?

You, the advocate for stopping the carbon-based economy, want everyone to spend a quarter million dollars to power their homes. Aren't you just so nice!Oh? what's that? We should tax the rich? Yeah, they are always good for another milking. But have you ever gotten a job from a poor man? All the jobs I ever got were from a rich man. The poor never seem to be hiring when I come around. But, of course, you, the advocate for a carbon-free world are so nice and wise that you get to pick which of us get to not have a job. Aren't you so nice for doing that for us?

Now, let's look at what we need to do to stop the CO2. According to one news report of a couple of days ago the House cap and trade bill wants to cut CO2 emissions by 17% in 2020 and 83% by 2050. Fine, what do we stop doing?

One very expensive place for energy use is agriculture. 1% of the world's energy is spent making fertilizer. (Science 6 September 2002: Vol. 297. no. 5587, pp. 1654 - 1655 ) If we cut that, we don't eat. But, you, the advocate for stopping carbon, have already seen two steps ahead of us. You know that if we starve a few billion people we wont' have a CO2 problem anymore. You, of course, like the pig in Animal Farm know that some pigs are more equal than other pigs. Aren't you so wise?

But the above is only 1% of the energy use. Food takes 10% of the world's energy. This includes tractors, food processing and trucking. You don't want us to eat in order to save those poor Bangladeshi's? Aren't you so nice?

On the other hand, we could simply starve the Bangladeshi's and then we wouldn't need to save them. A 30% reduction in agriculture energy use would probably finish the Bangladeshi's off. Wouldn't that be a grand idea?

Now, do you want a job? Most of our driving is to and from work. While we can all get into tiny clown cars (and risk being mowed down by Semi's) most of us wish a modicum of safety from our cars. But you, oh wise advocate of a no-carbon world, know that mowing down a few global warming skeptics will mean more energy for you. Aren't you so nice?

60-70% of the oil is used for transportation--the fuel with which we drive to work. An easy way to reduce this is to stop going to work. That will significantly reduce CO2 emissions but you will have trouble buying your food. But then, so what, sacrifices must be made, for the greater good of those who advocate a no-carbon world. They are so wise and so superior to all uv us pur unedjukated pipple.

I know, some will be saying what about higher gas mileage. If we assume we get 25 mpg on average, let's look at what will happen if we raise it to 43 mpg, a 40% reduction in energy for transportation. The first thing that will happen is that all the oil companies will have financial problems. Such a severe reduction in demand for oil would lead to massive layoffs of those of us who have survived the layoff-prone oil industry up to this point. Exploration for oil will cease. Great, some will say. Fantastic.

But what they don't know is that if we were to cease exploration, the pressure decline in oil fields would cause us to lose 5.5 million bbl/day of productive capacity per year. What would this mean? Well, we would certainly emit less CO2 but also the price of oil would be so low that everyone would start buying Hummers again. Within 6 years, oil production in the world would be about 40% less and the price of oil would spike, causing all the other industries to begin to lay people off. My estimate would be that you would see by then $500/bbl prices. The poor of course couldn't afford to go to work, and the GDP would plummet again. Aren't you so nice for advocating such a policy?

Do you hate coal? Let's stop burning it. Just remember you in the US will lose 20% of your its electricity. Sell the coal to China and the CO2 will still get into the atmosphere. So to stop it you need to put the coal miners out of work. Aren't you nice. Look at all the jobs you have stopped. All those wee idiots aren't on the freeways any more and the air is being cleansed of CO2.

China, who gets about 70% of their energy from coal. They will burn it because the minute their economy stops growing, there will be a revolution. Their people are just beginning to have a nice life and you want to tell them to stop having a good life. Aren't you nice. Yes, you get to engage in economic and environmental imperialism. You get to have a nice life but no one else can have it. Aren't you so nice to all those little brown people over seas! (seriously I think it is racism when these advocates for a no carbon world always tell other countries they can't develop their economies.

In any event you won't stop all the coal from being burned. The US with 20% less electricity would not be able to run its computer based economy. You will put 20% of the office workers out of work. Have fun in the dark without a job. Don't you love the world you have created?

Friday, June 19, 2009

In a comment to my last post, Hagiograph cited a Nasa Study which said of the Holocene Climatic Optimum:

"These orbital changes can be easily calculated and predict that the northern hemisphere should have been warmer than today during the mid-Holocene in the summer AND colder in the winter. The paleoclimatic data for the mid-Holocene shows these expected changes, however, there is no evidence to show that the average annual mid-Holocene temperature was warmer than today's temperatures."..."In summary, the mid-Holocene, roughly 6,000 years ago, was generally warmer than today, but only in summer and only in the northern hemisphere. More over, we clearly know the cause of this natural warming, and know without doubt that this proven "astronomical" climate forcing mechanism cannot be responsible for the warming over the last 100 years. "Source

It is a very easy thing to look on this blog and see if I have spoken of any warming in the southern hemisphere or in Antarctica during the Holocene Climate Optimum. NASA says there is no evidence for warming in the southern hemisphere. This is horse-hockey, ladies and gentlemen. Ignorance of the NASA writers is on display, but then, they do want to scare you into giving them your hard earned money in the form of taxes.

The interesting thing is that they are depending on models to tell them what the night time temperature is. All one can get from paleoclimatic information on the ground is indicators of average temperature. And all the indicators I have seen say the mean temperature was warmer by the 2-3 deg C seen in the map on the above referenced page. Those numbers are mean increases in temperature.

Let's look at the logic in the above statement that there is no evidence that Antarctica was warmer during the Climatic Optimum than today. It is sadly clear to me that people don't remember what they read on this blog from a few weeks back, nor do they look up data before responding to what is written.

If you do nothing else with this post read the bolded parts of the quotations below

The stability of floating ice shelves is an important indicator of ocean circulation and ice-shelf mass balance. A sub–ice-shelf sediment core collected during the Austral summer of 2000–2001 from site AM02 (69842.89S, 72838.49E) on the Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica, contains a full and continuous record of glacial retreat. The AM02 core site is ;80 km south of the floating ice shelf edge and contains a 0.5-m-thick Holocene surface layer of siliceous mud and diatom ooze of marine origin. Core data are supportive of sub– ice-shelf circulation models that predict the landward flow of oceanic water, and prove that the landward transport of hemipelagic sediments occurs beneath floating ice shelves over distances of at least ~80 km. An increase in sea-ice–associated diatom deposition in the upper part of the Holocene suggests that a major retreat of the Amery Ice Shelf to at least 80 km landward of its present location may have occurred during the mid-Holocene climatic optimum." Mark A. Hemer and Peter T. Harris, " Sediment core from beneath the Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica,"Geology; February 2003; v. 31; no. 2; p. 127–130, p. 127

How in the hell can NASA say that there is no evidence of the southern hemisphere being warmer when the Amery Ice Shelf was melted by 80 km during that period?

A question for NASA, if it was colder then than now, was it the cold that melted this ice cap? Utter illogic. The guy who wrote the NASA website ignored this evidence or didn't do sufficient research to know of it.

"Some studies in the northern Antarctic Peninsula suggest iceshelfcollapse in the mid-Holocene (Pudsey and Evans, 2001). To date, ice shelves farther south (south of 70[deg]S) have shown no catastrophic breakup, although some ice-shelf fronts are in retreat. This paper presents the first evidence of an early Holocene collapse of one of these more southern ice shelves." M. J. Bentley, “Early Holocene Retreat of the George VI Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula,” Geology, 33(2005):173-176, p. 173

And Bentley concludes that the melting in the southern hemisphere was greater than what we see today. The NASA writer conveniently doesn't bother to tell you about this data, preferring instead to stick with the party line that there is no evidence of a warm southern hemisphere, which is entirely a bunch of horse-hockey.

"The collapse of a currently extant ice shelf shows that early Holocene natural ocean-atmosphere variability in the Antarctic Peninsula was greater than the recent, potentially anthropogenically influenced changes.” M. J. Bentley, “Early Holocene Retreat of the George VI Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula,” Geology, 33(2005):173-176, p.176

Question for the illogical NASA writer: Was it the cold back then that melted the Amery and George VI Ice Shelves 8000 years ago? Or is this evidence of warming 8000 years ago in that most southerly of southern hemisphere locations?

Hagiograph, don't beleive everything you read which is written by a government employee who gets his funding and makes his living by scaring congressmen into giving him grant money.

And check me out to, but for goodness sake, actually check the data, don't just read one thing and conclude from the source that they are telling you the truth.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

All the scaremongering that goes around claims that global warming is something that we have never seen. 'Unprecedented!' we are told. but of course, those who know geology know what a crock of, well you know what, that is.

"Radiocarbon dates of peat from the top and base of a bog exposed by recent retreat of Rutor Glacier show that the glacier front terminated upvalley from the bog from 8400 until at least 6000 B. P. The evidence is consistent with botanical data that point to a high tree line during the interval and to reconstructed mean July temperatures at least 4oC warmer than present temperatures." Stephen C. Porter and Giuseppe Orombelli, "Glacier Contraction During the Middle Holocene in the Western Italian Alps: Evidence and Implications," Geology, 13(1985), p. 296

Consider that for 24 years we have known that the the Alps were significantly warmer 6000 years ago than at present. But 4 degrees? Lets put that in perspective. The IPCC says that the world will warm 2 to 5 deg C per doubling of the CO2. Since the world has already seen that much warming just as civilization started, we really have little to worry about. Life on earth won't end just because we once again warm by 4 deg C.

"This evidence supports the hypothesis that mountain glaciers were in a contracted state for several millennia during the middle Holocene Hypsithermal interval. It is also consistent with results of recent paleoclimatic reconstructions of Europe that, on the basis of pollen data, indicate the mean July temperature in the western Alps was at least 4o C warmer about 6000 B.P. than it is today." Stephen C. Porter and Giuseppe Orombelli, "Glacier Contraction During the Middle Holocene in the Western Italian Alps: Evidence and Implications," Geology, 13(1985), p.298

If only the hysteriacs and Holocene deniers would actually look at the scientific data they would understand how silly they sound.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Back to examining the raw data that Dave suggested I analyze. He clearly didn't do it. Today I want to look at the data between two towns situated on opposite sides of the Mississippi River, St. Joseph, Louisiana, and Port Gibson, Mississippi. The town centers are 25 miles apart. One would expect that they would have similar temperatures, both in the daily maximum, the daily minimum and the daily average. But, as we have seen so often before this is never the case.

I want to assure my few readers that every single comparison of two nearby towns has revealed data like you are about to see. All of them, each and every one, has lunacies like we see below. these lunacies in the raw data make it impossible to use this data to calculate the global average temperature or to know if the world is warming or not. Why do I say this? Because the error in the data is the amount of degrees one needs to move the data to 'correct' it. If you need to move the data by 10 degrees, that becomes the error. Then it becomes ludicrous to say that the world has warmed 1.1 deg F +/- 10 degrees. Statistically that is nonsense.

Let's start with the difference between the minimum temperatures between these two towns view of the data from 1930 to 2005.

You can see that the silly and erroneous data says that St. Joseph was hotter at night, for the past 70 years than the town just 25 miles away. Clearly this is bad data, yet this is the kind of data the global warming hysteriacs are depending upon to prove their case. And the data is crap.

The difference in the daily temperature values is equally ridiculous. This is seen here.

In both cases you can see that St. Joseph is hotter than Port Gibson for decades on end. And the 365 day running averages of the temperature differences get as large as 4 degrees over that 25 miles, a temperature gradient that, if true, should give rise to severe thunderstorms--which weren't observed for decades without end. Thus we can be sure that the temperature difference isn't this great and we can equally be sure that the temperature record of the US Historical Climate Network is crap.

Another way to illustrate the extremely bad state of the raw data is to examine a small period of time, May 1, to June 15, 1998. What I will show below IS reported in the raw data from this government site, source. This of course, is the site recommended by Dave, who seems to have disappeared after it has been shown over and over that the data he recommended is so bad.

Anyway, here is the daily maximum temperatures for this period of time. You can see that they generally move in sync but are separated by quite a large temperature difference. The Julian day of the year is the x-axis, May 1 through June 15, 1998.

The difference in the daily maximum temperatures of these two towns is shown here. Note that it is a fairly significant temperature difference

A temperature gradient of 16 degrees per 100 miles, which is what most of this difference is, would mean that a moderate cold front existed between the two towns for a month and a half. Never has such a situation been observed.

Let's look at the temperature difference of the daily minimums. This is truly bizarre. In the raw records of Daves favorite site during this time are temperatures (we are talking about May and June here) of 12 deg, 22 deg, and 38 deg, not to mention the -52 deg, -53 deg and -56 degrees. One might be tempted to say that the negative signs don't exist and that was a transcriptional error, but one can't do it for the 12, 22 and 38 deg F. Does anyone beleive that On May 16, 1998 the temperature in Port Gibson fell to 12 degrees F while 25 miles away the temperature in St. Joseph, Louisiana was a balmy 68 degrees?

After this cold spell, the next nightly low was 38 deg F before, according to the raw data, the temperature plunged to -56, then the next night was -53, followied by 4 days in the mid 60s at night. Then it was -52 followed by a 22 degree low temperature. Clearly this is crap. But it is what we are basing our global warming conclusions upon.

So, the record really does say it was in the -50s in May in Mississippi. The difference in the daily low temperature is shown below.

Don't let anyone tell you that the raw data is correctable or even of good quality. If it is, then we had some truly weird times along the Mississippi River in May and June of 1998.

One final thing. I plotted a histogram of the data. Those who know statistics will know that the errors in the data are not subject to normal statistical correction as the errors are non-Gaussian. That is a big word for really screwed up data.

Last night I had dinner with a couple we have known for 29 years. I know how long it was because I hired this gentleman out of college and while we mostly ended up working for different companies around the world, we occasionally kept in touch through the years. In 2002, my friend, a geophysicist, had fallen on very hard times. He was working as a motivational consultant, being one of the many casualties of the layoffs in the 1990 and early 2000s which swept through the oil industry like a plague of locusts. I ran into him coming out of my Aberdeen, Scotland office. He said, 'Glenn!" I had no idea who he was until he spoke more and I recognized the voice. I helped get him hired on in Aberdeen Scotland as a geophysicist and his career since then has done well.

He just finished an MBA so my wife and I took him and his wife out to celebrate at a very fancy restaurant worthy of the occasion. There he told me about the forum the AAPG (the American Association of Petroleum Geologists) had at their Denver convention last week. He said it was the first time he had ever seen anyone in one of these fora actually doubting anthropogenic global warming. And he found it interesting.

After the debate, in which he said the two skeptics did a grand job and got applause, he saw one of them, John Christy from U of Alabama, out in the hall after the symposia. My friend went up to thank him for providing a balance to the normal stuff. And this is where it got interesting as far as I am concerned.

According to my friend, Christy was appreciative but said that because of his doubts about some aspects of global warming he can't get funding! That did not surprise me because I know how the funding works. In almost any field of science, if you are not a party line kind of guy, you don't get the money. And the party line is decided by the people in the funding committees, a group of self-selected individuals. And they select those who agree with them to be on the funding committees.

So, here is the problem this raises for this 'consensus' that everyone seems to think is so important in the global warming area. If doubting can ruin your career because you get no funding, who in their right mind wants to have a career in climatology will publicly express doubt? Because of this, then, ideological purists can proclaim that 99% of climatologists accept global warming, which becomes true because the funding agency enforces that.

Why do I say it enforces ideological purity? Because in a university if you don't bring in grants, you won't get tenure. If the funding agencies ensure that no doubters get funding, then faculties fill up with people who have no doubt.

All of this is highly incestuous and creates a self-fulfilling consensus because that is what the money buys. If they want to prove that there is a consensus, fund skeptics and proponents alike and see where the data goes.

But this sick affair does show that if you want to win a battle in science, win the funding agencies

Sunday, June 7, 2009

I thought we would look at a problem seen between two Indiana towns,Columbus and Seymour. This data is from Dave's favorite site--he seems to have disappeared after I started this sequence of comparisons of data from his preferred data site, showing how abysmal the state of the raw data is in, and this data has been partially corrected. The data is from here

First, lets look at the full record. You can see that the two towns differ in temperature by half a degree a year, first being warmer in one town then the other. These towns, are separated by only 21 miles.

But one can also see that in 1992 and 1993 something strange happened to the temperature. For 2 years it was hotter, almost every day in Columbus. Was Columbus a living hell? Did the devil and his minions bring fire and brimstone to Columbus? No, it is just the normal crap of the raw data. but lest look at it in detail.

The red line is the the running average, a 30 day running average. It varies throughout the 2 years but it is almost always hotter in Columbus. Somebody was doing something to one of those temperature stations to make it hotter or cooler, and they did it for 2 years. No one knows what it was. But this is the quality of data that everyone is basing their hysteria of global warming upon.

Let's look at those 2 years in more detail. Here is the histogram of temperature differences for those two years. You can see it is anything BUT Gaussian,meaning that normal probabilistic statistics won't help it.

It is interesting that we US citizens love to think that we are the most advanced society on earth yet we can't measure temperature better than this.

The Holocene denying, global warming hysteriacs have not listened carefully to the testimony of the Iceman, that poor soul whose body was found on top of an Italian Mountain Sept. 19, 1991. Otzi, as he has come to be known, clearly tells us that the Alps were clear of ice, or nearly clear when this man met his death high in the Alps. The body was found in a snow-covered depression, sticking out of snow and ice by two hikers. The amazing thing was the body was in near perfect condition, and this says loads about the conditions on that mountain 5000 years ago when Otzi walked the earth.

Why? Because normally when a human or animal body falls into a glacier or is covered with snow that turns into a glacier, the body is ground apart into tiny pieces and spread over a large area. This process can happen very rapidly, and was used as a reason, initially, to doubt that Otzi was as old as he is (dating proves he is about 5000 years old). About 400 years ago, a mercenary fell into the glacier in Theodul Pass. When 400 years later, his body parts began to appear on the surface of the glacier, he became known as the Theodul Pass Mercenary. The discoverers thought they were picking up a coconut only to find it was a human skull with hair still attached. The rest of the body was found over an area of 30 x 225 feet, ground into little pieces by the movement of the ice. In 1988, parts of what became known as the Porchabella glacier sheperdess, began appearing over an area of 20 acres. This is what happens to a body in a glacier.

But Otzi escaped this fate. How? Well, it seems that when he died, the glacier wasn't there. He took his last refuge in a small ditch, probably to get out of the wind, and died in that nearly ice-free gully. The snow and eventually glaciers came later, covering him, but because he was in the depression, the movement of the ice went on above him, and didn't grind him to powder. Here is what Konrad Spindler says. Notice the last sentence.

"From these considerations, and bearing in mind the topography of the site, we may conclude that in the Iceman's lifetime climatic conditions were similar to those prevailing at present. The gully in the rock must then, as in Sept 1991, have been wholly or largely clear of snow and ice, with mean annual temperatures of about 0.5o Centigrade above the longterm average. During the known warm intervals of the roman period from the third to the fourth century, or those of the Middle Ages from the ninth to the tenth century, the ice at Hauslabjoch certainly did not melt to the present extent. Either precipitation was less then or it was less warm than today.

"The state of preservation of the corpse is so good that the man must have been covered by snow while he was dying or immediately after his death, without subsequently ever resurfacing. If the snow remained cold and dry for some time, and hence permeable to air, temporary dry-freezing would be conceivable given the terrain's exposure to wind. Of course, the body did not dehydrate entirely. That some of the body fluid remained was effectively demonstrated when the corpse thawed out completely in the dissection room of the Forensic Medicine Institute and could again be manipulated. totally desiccated mummified bodies, by contrast are feather-light and break if one tries to bend them."

"Patzelt's expert statements on the prehistoric climate show that glacier recession and warming-up occurred in the Holocene period of geological history quite independently of the man-made greenhouse effect. Although present-day climatic conditions show a persistent warm phase, they keep entirely within the post-glacial fluctuation range." Konrad Spindler, The Man in the Ice, (London: Phoenix, 2001), p. 55

In other words, the Holocene deniers don't tell you that long before there were autos, the earth was as warm then as it is now.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Today we are going to take a backward look at the IPCC's predictions about global warming to see if the past 40 years have behaved as they claim the next 40 years will behave.

The IPCC says this

"The equilibrium climate sensitivity is a measure of theclimate system response to sustained radiative forcing.It is not a projection but is defined as the global averagesurface warming following a doubling of carbondioxide concentrations. It is likely to be in the range2°C to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and isvery unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values substantiallyhigher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded, but agreementof models with observations is not as good for thosevalues."IPCC, 2007: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change[Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M.Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA., P. 12 Source

They say that the temperature rise will go up 2 to 4.5 degrees for every doubling of CO2. The temperature rise due to CO2 is logarithmic and the math works out as follows:

Let's first see how this warming compares to the satellite data. The Huntsville Satellite data started in 1979 and the starting ppm, in 1979, was 335 ppm. From that, and the rise in CO2, one can derive what temperature rise we should have seen. I use the famous Keeling curve as the source for the CO2 rise in this calculation. It is the most often cited CO2 curve and is often used to scare the hell out of all of us. that is the picture below.

I want to emphasize that in the pictures above and below all the curves are TEMPERATURE not CO2. For the satellite data they are the predicted temperature withthe starting CO2 being the CO2 ppm in 1979, (335 ppm) and the ending beingthe CO2 in 2007 (388 ppm). The 2x starting is 670 ppm, so the curves are what we should expect for the temperature rise since 1979. Clearly we havebeen way below the expected.

The equation since 1979 is 2 x ln(current year CO2ppm/335)/ln(670/335) or 5 x ln(current year co2ppm/335)/ln(670/335).

One can clearly see in the expected temperature rise expected due to CO2 far far out ran the observed rise as measured by the satellites. This clearly indicates that the above quotation from the IPCC is utterly flawed. The world's temperature is NOT rising at either 2 or 4.5 or even 5 (as some older sources declared). And it shows that it is NOT going to rise in the future at the scary rate they claim.

Now lets look at the global temperature anomaly derived from NOAA's Global Climate at a Glance. I plotted the global temperature anomaly since 1958, when the Keeling Curve, the most often cited CO2 curve. In this case the starting CO2 is 315 ppm in 1958. Once again, the world is not warming as predicted by the IPCC. The temperature rise is far smaller than what would be expected.

This, to me, says that the IPCC is nothing but a scaremongering organization. Their predictions of the effect of CO2 has not worked out in the past but we are expected to believe that it will work out as they say in the future. Why should we believe them? Surely someone somewhere has plotted the data as I just plotted it to see if the past matches the predictions these guys are making. That would just be good science. But I have never ever seen anyone do what I just did. Is it possible that the IPCC isn't publishing things like this, which might make people think that the world isn't behaving as they say it will as the 'temperature kills civilization?

About Me

I have had 39 years experience looking for oil and gas around the world, from Scotland, to Algeria, to the East Coast of the United States, South Texas, West Texas, the Rocky Mountain region, Alaska and China. I have found 33 oil fields and drilled my share of dry holes. The various positions held by me include: Manager of Geophysical Training for a major oil Co., Chief Geophysicist for a small independent oil company, Geophysical Manager - Onshore Gulf Coast, Geophysical Manager--Gulf of Mexico and Chief Geophysicist for China , Manager Geophysics for the US Offshore, Geophysical Manager for the North Sea, Director of Integrated Technology, Director of Exploration for China with a large independent oil company and lived in Beijing China. I speak Mandarin (not fluent but able to communicate). Currently I have my own geophysical consulting firm, living in Houston